


Tooth and Claw

by IronWoman359



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragons, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Running Away, a bit of language (nothing major)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-26 20:28:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15670704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IronWoman359/pseuds/IronWoman359
Summary: Patton knows it’s a bad idea to hoard manmade things, he really does. But he finds he just can’t help himself, and he ventures far closer to human settlements than most of his kind do these days in search of his precious treasures. It’s on such a search that he discovers what may perhaps be the greatest treasure he’s ever seen in his long life…and he’ll fight tooth and claw to keep it safe.





	Tooth and Claw

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally based on a post by tumblr user @raiseafuckingglass about Dragon!Patton having a hoard of stuffed animals and keeping Virgil nestled up in them, because that was just too dang cute and I had to write it, but I got carried away and accidentally turned this into yet another fantasy story, with a backstory and more plot to come, including some eventual romantic prinxiety. Welp, look forward to more of this, I guess!

There were a lot of misconceptions about dragons. Most of the general population saw them as raging beasts, obsessed with hoarding treasure, kidnapping princesses, and terrorizing villages. While it was true that  _some_  dragons hoarded gold, the reality was that Dragons just likedhoarding  _anything_  that they found beautiful. 

Usually every dragon had one thing in particular that it liked to hoard, and it could be just about anything that caught their eye. Some dragons hoarded interesting stones, some hoarded colorful feathers, and yes, some hoarded various treasures. A few did find themselves attracted to manmade things, but most tried to push those desires away and soon found other things in nature to hoard; things that would keep them from bothering humanity too much. 

Unfortunately, it only took one dragon to change everything for the worst.

The story went that a powerful dragon found himself attracted to manmade jewelry after coming upon a wagon party of a nobleman that had fallen to a storm. The crowns, rings, and necklaces the dragon picked from the corpses to examine were so exquisite that he could not resist the pull to acquire more. He took to raiding castles for their wealth; no royal guard could stop him and no treasury was safe from him. 

Until one day as he flew over a castle, the glint of sunlight off of a tiara worn by the king’s daughter caught his eye. As he flew closer, he was struck not just by the beauty of the crown, but the beauty of the girl herself. He realized that his hoard would never be anywhere near as beautiful as she was, so he claimed not just the tiara, but the princess for himself. 

And after seeing this one girl’s beauty, he became hungry for more like it, and began sieging castles not for their gold, but for their maidens. Knights went out in hopes of rescuing the captured girls, but none prevailed. Kings and Lords hid away their daughters, hoping to spare them from a horrible fate, but if the dragon caught wind of any lady’s beauty, there was no stopping him. 

Word quickly spread across the land, and kings offered rewards to anyone who could slay a dragon in hopes that it may keep their country’s daughters safe. Dragons that had been living peacefully on the edges of human society were suddenly being hunted down, and the human’s fear of the creatures spread like wildfire. 

The widespread panic of the humans caused most of the dragons to retreat deep into mountainous regions unpopulated by humans to avoid being hunted down and slaughtered based on the mere assumption that they would follow in the footsteps of their kin who had stolen the girls. Young dragons born after the time of their exile were warned never to go near human settlements or to hoard things that were manmade. 

It was really unfortunate then, that Patton had already been hoarding manmade things for years. 

He always knew it wasn’t the best idea, but even after the dragons went into hiding, he couldn’t bring himself to stop. Dragons hoarded what they found the most beautiful, and to him there was nothing in the world more beautiful than the soft plush toys that human children played with. 

“Stuffed animals,” Logan had told him they were called, the first time Patton had found one. “Evidently human children use them in play, as well as to help them sleep at night.” 

“They help humans sleep?” Patton asked, his large eyes bright with wonder. 

“Yes,” Logan said absently as he pushed around in his hoard of books, searching for a specific title. “Small humans snuggle them close. I suspect that the physical comfort they offer is a major factor of this, though the reason often cited in children’s texts is more likely psychological.” 

“Psychological how?” Patton asked, sniffing the stuffed bear curiously. 

“Well, children’s stories speak of them providing protection against physical threats, such as monsters that may be lurking in the dark. Obviously they are inanimate objects and can offer no  _real_  protection, leading me to believe that the security they provide has a psychological rather than physical basis.” 

“That…that’s amazing,” Patton whispered, regarding the squishy little animal with a new reverence. 

Logan snorted, and flicked his tail.

“There are many amazing things in this universe, Patton, but the things that  _you_  find amazing never cease to bewilder me.” 

“How can you  _not_ think this is amazing?” Patton asked, blowing smoke from his nostrils in excitement. “Human children are so small, so vulnerable, and their parents know they have reason to be afraid of the world, when the world is so big and vast and full of dangers, but they give them these small toys and promise ‘this will keep you safe. This will protect you.’ And they  _believe_  their parents, and they sleep more soundly because of these little guys, and…” Patton shook his head and grinned. “It’s just…it’s so  _beautiful_ ,” he murmured, staring down at the toy. 

Logan snapped his head up, frozen halfway through a page-turn, one claw delicately lifting the thin sheet of paper. 

“Patton…” he warned, raising one brow at his friend. 

“What?” Patton asked, doing his best to sound innocent. 

“Patton…you realize how  _difficult_  these would be to hoard? Hoarding  _any_  manmade object is tricky—” 

“ _You_ do it,” Patton pointed out, nodding towards the books piled high around them. 

“—but these belong to  _children,_ ” Logan continued as if Patton hadn’t spoken. “I can’t really envision you just whisking away a human’s plaything like one might snag a stray sheep.” 

“NO! Of course not. But…I found this one. It was in the village dump, whoever owned it must have abandoned it.” 

“Yes, it is rather common for children to discard them once they have ‘outgrown’ the need for that comfort. Perhaps they are not as ‘beautiful’ as you think, Patton,” Logan said before returning to his book.  

But Patton did think they were beautiful. 

Even if they had been abandoned by their owners, he still saw something of value in the seemingly useless trinkets. If anything, the thought of the once beloved toys becoming nothing more than faded strips of cloth and bits of stuffing only encouraged Patton to look for them, to ensure that they would always have a bit of that magic left in them, and never be forgotten. 

Slowly as time went on, Patton’s hoard grew, and he knew each animal in his ever increasing pile by its name. Some of them were names he knew that their child owners once had called them by, others Patton had given names, but like every dragon’s hoard, each piece had its place and was treasured by its dragon. 

After the dragons’ exile into the mountains, it became much more difficult for Patton to find new animals to add. Just moving the hoard alone had taken what felt like  _forever_ , and he knew that others had it even worse. His hoard was relatively small, as he’d only been hoarding the stuffed animals for around a decade. Before that he’d never been able to settle on one thing to hoard, finding too much beauty in pretty much anything to single one thing out for a collection. Poor Logan, meanwhile, had been hoarding books for almost fifty years. While that still wasn’t very long to a dragon, Logan had amassed quite an impressive library in that time. Carefully moving each of his delicate tomes and scrolls had taken months, even with Patton helping. 

Now, dragons hunted for food and for things to add to their hoard under the cover of darkness, for fear of being seen, and even then, most kept to the mountains. Discovery was not worth the sweeter meat that could be found in the forests close to human settlements; mountain goat may be tough, but it was filling. 

Patton though, couldn’t bring himself to care about the danger. While what had happened to the princesses broke his heart, he knew it was possible to hoard from humans without being discovered, or causing any distress. He’d been doing it for years, after all, and he wasn’t going to stop now. 

* * *

Patton slinked through the forest late one winter evening, his wings folded tight against his back. He moved silently, years of practice making him an expert at stealth, even though the environment was unnatural to him. He was just grateful there was no snow; if there had been, there would have been no concealing his tracks. The hunters would surely have been in a panic come morning as they ventured into the woods with bows on their backs. Logan would never let him hear the end of it then. 

It had been over a century since the exile by now, and while the tales of dragons that raided villages and snatched away beautiful maidens still circulated, there were no humans left alive that remembered the days when fire rained down from the sky and girls were carried off screaming by the greedy dragon who hoarded princesses. Fear of dragons still loomed over the people, but it was more abstract now, the way one might fear the  _possibility_ of what awaited in the dark. There might be nothing there at all, but there also might be  _something,_  and it was that something that set your heart pounding in your chest. 

Of course, in this case, the thing the people feared was very much real, and _nearer than they knew,_ Patton thought to himself as he grew closer to the edge of the woods. Despite their fear of dragons, good farmland had brought settlers to the valley beneath the mountains where Patton kept his lair, and he had been waiting eagerly for their children to begin reaching the age where they no longer needed a stuffed wolf or bear to keep them safe at night. 

Of course, some chose to keep their nighttime companions, which Patton found every bit as sweet, but it meant that he could not take them into his own hoard. Logan had been right, he’d never take a toy from a child that still needed it. Even if that child was a hundred years old. But still, often the toys were either passed down to younger siblings or discarded, sometimes even by parents if they thought their offspring had grown too old for such fantasies. That never sat well with Patton, and he always made sure those particular animals were given special places in his hoard. Every one of these nocturnal warriors deserved honorable treatment, and if the humans wouldn’t give it, then he would. 

Patton was distracted from his thoughts by a familiar smell suddenly drifting towards him on the chilled night air. He had tried for years to properly describe the smell of a stuffed animal, but the closest thing he’d ever been able to come up with was ‘comforting,’ which wasn’t exactly descriptive. Nevertheless, Patton was very well acquainted with the scent, and it drew him closer to the source. 

As he moved forwards, hugging the tree line, his ears pricked forward as they picked up the sound of hurried footsteps crunching across the frozen ground. They were coming from the direction of one of the farmhouses, and while Patton could tell that whatever was running had two legs, it seemed oddly light for a human, it probably only weighed around fifty pounds. 

 _A child,_  Patton just had time to think, before the sound of a door banging open and a male human voice reached his ears. 

“Go ahead ‘n run, ya little bastard! You’ll be dead by morning iffya do!” 

The man’s voice maid the spines on Patton’s back bristle and a growl grow in the back of his throat. He had heard men shout like this before, their voices often accompanied by the stink of alcohol and the clap of skin against skin. Patton detested them. 

“Go on then, if you know what’s good for ya, you’ll be back before dawn ya useless piece o’ shit!” The door slammed shut again, and the only sound now reaching Patton’s ears was the child’s footsteps growing closer as they ran closer and closer to the woods, closer to  _him._  

The child’s breathing was in earshot now too, short, erratic and scared, and the sound made Patton’s blood run hot. As the child ran closer and closer to the forest, Patton realized that the man had been right. It was the dead of winter. True, there was no snow, but it was still freezing at night, and if the cold didn’t get the child first, a wild animal might. No, if the child did not return to the farmhouse, they’d most likely be dead by morning. 

Well, not if Patton had anything to say about it. 

He could see the child now, what looked to be a little boy dressed in clothes far too thin for the weather and clutching what had caught Patton’s attention in the first place, a rather ragged looking stuffed black cat. It was made of patches of different fabric, the stitches were visible, and the stuffing was showing in places. It was obviously handmade, and had obviously been working very hard to keep the night’s terrors at bay. 

Patton sighed, a deep, heavy sound that send smoke from his nostrils rising up through the trees. 

Unfortunately, not every terror that a child faced could be fought with stuffed animals. 

The boy paused briefly at the sound of Patton’s sigh, looking around the dark forest with apprehension shining in his eyes. He was hunched over on himself, dark bangs falling in front of his face, and his shoulders shook, with the cold or with fear, Patton couldn’t tell. He glanced back towards the farm, as if contemplating what the man had said about him not lasting the night. 

Right then, Patton decided to act. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew he was perhaps being foolish. But that had never stopped him before, and he wasn’t about to let it start now. 

He lifted up his head so he was more noticeable and took a few steps towards the child, slowly so as not to startle him too badly. 

The tactic didn’t appear to work at first and the child stumbled backwards, eyes wide with fright, but Patton’s reflexes were quicker than a cat’s and in an instant, he had shifted his body, wrapping his tail around behind the boy to keep him from falling. 

“Sshhh, it’s alright, Kiddo,” Patton said in his calmest, most reassuring voice. “I’m not gonna hurt you, okay? You’re alright.” 

The boys eyes were wider than saucers now as he stared slack-jawed up at Patton, taking in his enormous, scaly form. As he looked up at Patton’s face, the dragon could see a bruise that covered half the child’s left cheek, and he felt his anger stirring in his belly, but he contained it for the sake of the little one nestled against his tail. 

“My name’s Patton,” he continued, smiling as gently as he could with his dragon’s fangs. “What’s your name?” 

The boy was silent for a moment, all but hiding his face behind his cat plushie, but then his eyes locked with the dragon’s and something softened ever so slightly in his gaze. 

“Virgil,” he whispered so quietly that Patton might not have heard him if his hearing was not leagues better than a human’s. 

“Virgil?” Patton repeated, and the boy nodded. “That’s a lovely name,” Patton said with a smile. “What about your friend?” He nodded towards the black cat in Virgil’s arms. “Does he have a name too?” 

Virgil stiffened and loosened his grip on the cat. 

“He—it’s stupid,” he muttered, looking down at the ground. “I—I shouldn’t even have him, I’m too old, I—”

“Now now, no one is too old for a stuffed animal!” Patton insisted gently. “Why, I’m almost 200 years old, and I have lots of stuffed animals!” 

“R-really?” Virgil asked, looking back up at Patton, who nodded. 

“You bet! I’ve been making sure the ones that don’t have homes anymore have somewhere to stay!” 

“That…sounds nice,” Virgil muttered, looking down and absently rubbing on of the cat’s ears between his thumb and forefinger. 

“So, how about it?” Patton asked again. “Does he have a name?” 

After a moment, Virgil nodded. 

“His…his name is Sir Squiggles,” he admitted. “He’s a knight…he protects me.” 

Patton nodded wisely. 

“Stuffed animals are good at that,” he said, and Virgil offered up a small smile. Patton’s heart leaped at the sight, and he knew right then that he wanted to see more of that smile. It looked so foreign on the little boy’s face, and Patton just knew that this child deserved to smile all the time, something that had clearly been denied him before. 

“So Virgil…” Patton continued, taking care not to say anything that would spook the child again. “It looks to me like you and Sir Squiggles…might be running away. Is that right?” 

Immediately, Virgil tensed, and his eyes darted around as if he were looking for a way to escape. 

“It’s okay,” Patton quickly added, his smile going a little bit sad. “I had to run away in order to stay safe once too.” 

“Really?” Virgil asked, the tension in his shoulders barely loosening. 

“Really,” Patton nodded. “It was a long time ago…but people wanted to hunt down dragons like me because they thought we were bad.” 

“So dragons aren’t bad?” Virgil blurted out, then immediately slapped his hand up to his mouth. “I’m sorry, I d-didn’t mean—” 

“It’s okay,” Patton reassured. “And no, dragons aren’t bad. Some dragons are bad, yes, just like some humans are bad. But just like most humans are good, most dragons are good too.” 

“I don’t think most humans are good,” Virgil muttered, rubbing Sir Squiggles’s ear. 

“Well, maybe you haven’t met very many good ones,” Patton said, once more fighting back the boiling rage that was brewing in his stomach at the thought of this child, this  _innocent_  child thinking that most people in the world weren’t good. 

“Whatever,” Virgil shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, anyway…you’re right. I’m…I’m running away.” He sniffed, and squeezed his eyes shut. “I  _am,_  I really am, I’m not going b-back there, I’m r-really run-running, I’m really running…” 

Patton moved forward on instinct as Virgil began to cry, cupping the child’s back with his claw and drawing him close to his chest. He felt so fragile in Patton’s grip, and the dragon felt a surge of protective instinct rise in his chest. 

“Hush now,” Patton leaned down and nuzzled the top of Virgil’s head with his snout as the child cried. “It’ll all be alright, Kiddo, I’ve got you now.” 

“I d-don’t…I don’t know what, what to  _do_ ,” Virgil hiccuped against Patton’s chest. “I don’t have…there’s no one…I don’t have anywhere to go.” 

“Well,” Patton said, drawing back a bit so Virgil could see the sincerity in his eyes. “If you like, you can come with me? At least for the night, so you have somewhere warm to sleep?” 

Virgil stared up at the dragon, no doubt weighing all the stories he’d heard about the monstrous nature of dragons against the evidence of his own eyes before him. 

“W-well…maybe,” he agreed, and Patton’s heart soared. “At least for tonight.” 

“Well then Kiddo, hold on tight to Sir Squiggles,” Patton instructed as he maneuvered his claws around so he could safely scoop up the small human. “It’s going to be an interesting ride. But I won’t let you fall, okay?” He smiled down at the child as he spread his wings out. “I promise.” 

Virgil nodded, and curled up against Patton’s claw. While the talons were as long and sharp as swords, the fleshier inside of the grip was surprisingly warm and comforting, and Virgil fit quite well nestled in the dragon’s grasp. Before he knew it, he was falling asleep, protected from the cold and the wind by Patton’s loving embrace.

As Patton flew into the night, taking great care not to jostle the small human in his talons, he felt a resolve growing deep inside him. He’d left his lair that night in search of something small, seemingly insignificant that no one had wanted anymore.  

Now, as he glanced down at his claws, he knew that all the treasures in all the hoards in all the worlds couldn’t compare to this tiny human asleep in his grasp. 

“Don’t worry, Virgil,” he murmured as he flew towards his lair. “I’ve got you now. And on my life, you will be safe.”


End file.
